U.S. companies will no longer be subject to certain reporting requirements from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and they also obtained some relief last week when some obsolete immigration-related rules were rescinded.

All in a day’s work by the U.S. Department of Labor, which announced the changes on Nov. 20.

The OSHA reporting requirements concern the agency’s standard for mechanical power presses, which punch, form or assemble metal or other materials. Workers can be exposed to hand, finger or arm injuries — often resulting in amputation — if parts of a press are worn, damaged or not operating properly. Under the new rule, employers will no longer have to document mandatory weekly inspections of these presses while clarifying the responsibility of employers to perform and document any maintenance or repairs necessary to protect the safety of workers who operate them.

DOL boasts that removing the weekly inspection and test certifications will reduce 613,600 hours of unnecessary paperwork burden on employers.

The final rule will be effective Feb.18, 2014, unless OSHA receives a significant adverse comment by Dec. 20, 2013.

On the immigration front, DOL announced it is rescinding these rules that it considered obsolete:

Direct Final Rule for the ETA Labor Certification Process for Logging Employment and Non-H-2A Agricultural Employment;

Direct Final Rule for the ETA Attestation Process for Employers Using F-1 Students in Off-Campus Work; and

the Direct Final Rule for the ETA Removal of Attestation Process for Facilities Using H-1A Registered Nurses Subparts D and E Regulations.

You can read more about these developments and get more background information on the rules affected at the DOL’s website.

Count among those thankful this holiday for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission one Frantz Morette, who worked as a translator at Mountaire Farms, Inc., which operates a poultry processing plant in Lumber Bridge, North Carolina.

Mr. Morette was a translator for Haitian employees at the plant, and the EEOC alleged that when he reported the abuses that those employees were subject to–including having chicken parts thrown at them by their co-workers–he was fired in retaliation for his reports. He also complained to management that the Haitian employees were denied bathroom breaks and training for better jobs at the facility.

The EEOC announced Monday that Mountaire settled its Title VII suit by agreeing to pay Morette $48,000 in back pay and institute other relief to make sure these violations never occur again.

But maybe the real beneficiaries of this settlement are the Haitian employees whose rights will now be respected provided Mountaire lives up to its terms.

In addition to monetary damages, the two-year consent decree resolving the suit requires Mountaire Farms to revise its existing anti-discrimination policy to include procedures for reporting discrimination; give assurance that the company will protect the confidentiality of discrimination complaints to the extent possible; give further assurance that Mountaire Farms will not retaliate or take action against a person who makes a complaint about discrimination; and institute a procedure for investigating such complaints. Mountaire Farms will also post a copy of its anti-discrimination policy at all of its facilities and train its employees on anti-discrimination laws annually.

Add to the prohibited grounds of discrimination that some legislators in Wisconsin want to add–the right to refuse to get a flu shot.

The proposed legislation, 2013 Assembly Bill 247, would prohibit employers there–including those in the health care industry–from demoting, suspending, firing or discriminating against employees who refuse a seasonal influenza vaccination.

It also prohibits any employer from doing any of the following:

refusing to hire a prospective employee or renew the contract of an employee or contractor on the basis of
vaccination status for seasonal influenza or refusal to be vaccinated against seasonal
influenza;

requiring any employee or contractor to receive a vaccination against
seasonal influenza if the employee or contractor declines in writing after receiving
certain information; and

requiring unvaccinated employees or contractors to wear masks in retaliation for refusing the influenza vaccination; or requiring employees or
contractors in a health care setting to wear masks in a manner that exceeds a certain requirement.

Can the federal government compel employers to provide health insurance for their employees that includes birth control and related medical services if the employer objects on religious grounds?

That’s the question the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide today. The justices granted review in two cases challenging the so-called “contraception mandate” under the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s health care reform law.

The law requires employers provide insurance policies covering 10 essential minimum services, one of which is contraception.

However, some 40 companies have challenged that edict in federal court, arguing that it unconstitutionally infringes on their religious beliefs.

The law’s defenders argue, in turn, that allowing these companies to avert the mandate would be imposing their religious views on their employees who want birth control services.

Today the court agreed to hear the case of Hobby Lobby Inc., an Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain with 13,000 full-time employees successfully challenged the mandate in lower court.

The challenge in the second case was brought by Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp., a Pennsylvania company that employs 950 people in making wood cabinets.

Court watchers expect the justices to hear the arguments in the case in March and issue a decision by June at the end of the court’s current term.

Just like the U.S.-Iran negotiations over nuclear weapons, there’s got to be some give and take when it comes to an employer and employee negotiating a reasonable accommodation for religious observance.

Religious accommodation is not a my-way-or-the-highway matter.

Which is why a Muslim employee came up short last week in his failure to accommodate and constructive discharge claims under Title VII.

The employee argued he should have been allowed to pray in the lobby of the employer’s building or in the employer’s HR department.

But the court said these suggested accommodations were unreasonable and would cause undue hardship.

Instead, under the circumstances, the company offered reasonable accomodations of allowing him to pray in his car during work breaks, or outside the building or at a mosque.

The case is Farah v. A-1 Careers, in the District of Kansas, decided Nov. 20.

The U.S. Department of Labor has enlisted New York’s Attorney General and the state’s labor department in a stepped-up effort to fight employer misclassification of employees as independent contractors or other nonemployee status.

The parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Nov. 18 “to work together to protect the rights of employees and level the playing field for responsible employers by reducing the practice of misclassification,” according to US DOL’s announcement.

To show the agencies mean business, the announcement noted that such agreements have resulted in a 97 percent increase in the amount of back pay recovered compared to where these agreements were not present.

Women who work at Señor Frog’s, a popular Mexican-themed restaurant and bar in Honolulu, won’t have to worry about being vicims of sexual harassment any more, provided the company that operated the business follows through on its commitment under a settlement the EEOC announced today.

According to the commission, 13 employees of the restaurant were either sexually harasssed or retaliated against between 2007 and 2012. The EEOC charged that male managers at the restaurant subjected the female workers to sexual comments, language and advances, and unwelcome physical contact.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the EEOC also charged that the restaurant passed women over for promotion, assigned them less favorable shifts and paid them less than male employees.

The restaurant at which these alleged violations occurred has since closed. Under terms of the settlement, if La Rana Hawaii LLC opens another Senor Frog’s restaurant, it must create and distribute an anti-harassment policy and train all of its supervisors to prevent any future harassment, discrimination, or harassment from occurring.

As an aside, anyone who’s been paying attention knows that today is the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination. It’s interesting to recall that when he was killed, there was as yet no Civil Rights Act of 1964, Age Discrimination in Employment, Americans With Disabilities Act, no Executive Orders forbidding discrimination by government contractors.

The one major civil rights law that Kennedy signed–the Equal Pay Act–addressed unfair compensaton practices toward women. An important, but small, slice of the civil rights pie.

Kennedy had at least rhetorically committed the federal government to enacting civil rights legislation prior to his death, and I’m sure he would very proud today-and astounded– to see the progress we’ve made since then. But he’d also acknowledge that there’s more work to be done.